Masquerade (53 page)

Bremner nodded. “Very good.”

He called in two female nurses, who dressed Walker in a sexy black linen sheath with a T back and black high-heeled sandals. They added a long auburn wig and carefully applied makeup. He'd gone to a great deal of trouble to duplicate the outfit the Sansborough woman always wore for her meetings at the Languedoc.

Bremner sent the nurses away. “Looks identical to Liz Sansborough, doesn't she?” he remarked, putting oversized black sunglasses on her face.

“The resemblance is amazing,” Dr. Levine agreed, although privately he found her too taut and bloodless for his taste. And, for a moment, he could have sworn she mumbled something. But he had more sense than to mention either thought.

Bremner told Walker to sit. He handed her a black cloth purse. “Open it. Take out what's inside.”

She did. She extended the pistol in front of her. The muscles
in her arms corded with the weight. Automatically she held it correctly, one hand gripping the butt and trigger, the other hand supporting the first. The pistol was an old, heavy Colt .45. It would be impossible to trace.

“Return it to the purse,” Bremner instructed. She did, and he described her assignment in precise detail.

Chapter 61

7:52
P.M
.

Asher Flores, Jack O'Keefe, and their small band were sweating in the parked van when they saw the woman.

Asher was behind the wheel. “It's her. The real Liz Sansborough!”

She had the same long, elegant build as Sarah's. The slim hips and large breasts, the long, thick auburn hair that glinted gold and red in the evening sun. She wore oversized black sunglasses and a black sheath dress with a T of material across the low back. On her feet were black high-heeled sandals. She carried a black-cloth purse. As she passed down the street, one man after another turned to stare.

The assassin's daughter.

As she disappeared into the Languedoc's foyer, Asher said, “This means either the Carnivore
is
still alive, or Liz is up to something else.”

“Not exactly a big surprise,” O'Keefe said. “Now the next question: Where will Hughes and his people come out? You better pray it isn't the helipad.”

“It can't be,” Asher realized abruptly. “The Carnivore wouldn't allow it. Too easy to follow on radar, too easy to track him from the air if he senses a trap and has to abort the coming-in. No, he'd have specifically said no helicopters.”

“By God, I think you're right.”

“I
hope
I'm right,” Asher said.

He wanted to start up the van, as if revving the engine would force Bremner and Liz Sansborough to speed up their last-minute fencing for small advantage. He wanted them to come out.

Instead he rolled down his window to get some air in the stifling early evening. The August sun was beating down in long, slanting shafts. The odors of hot concrete and exhaust hung in the Paris air.

The minutes ticked slowly.

8:00
P.M
.

Asher looked at his watch. “Eight o'clock! Where are—”

“There they are!”

An automatic metal-mesh gate had emerged from hidden slots at the entry to the parking lot and was closing. The two attendants vanished, and six men in light summer suits and sunglasses stepped out from the Languedoc's elevator. Two took up posts near the gate as it rolled shut. They locked it and watched the street. Three prowled back into the garage. The last stood sentry next to the Company elevator.

Then, like two black ghosts, a pair of limousines emerged from the bowels of the garage. They would be Languedoc limos with full high-security equipment. The long vehicles stopped one behind the other, engines running, in front of the Company elevator. The first limo was near the mouth of the garage, while the second was directly in front of the elevator. The windows of both were darkly tinted.

Asher inhaled. “This is it.”

He started the van's engine. Next, the Company elevator opened. It looked as if he'd guessed correctly, because out stepped Liz Sansborough, Hughes Bremner, and—

“Arlene Debo!” Jack O'Keefe's eyebrows shot up. “So Hughes convinced her and the President to change their minds again. I'd love to hear what cock-and-bull yarn he concocted this time.”

Asher was uneasy. “Hughes must be feeling damn sure his plan is foolproof to give the DCI a ticket to the actual coming-in.”

“She probably invited herself,” O'Keefe decided. “She's no shrinking violet, our Arlene.”

The elevator returned upstairs as Bremner, Liz Sansborough, and Arlene Debo walked rapidly to the lead limo. Bremner put Sansborough into the back seat. Arlene Debo took the front passenger seat. Bremner himself got behind the wheel.

In two minutes the elevator opened once more. Through the mesh gate Asher watched a second Liz Sansborough step into the parking garage. A twin in every detail from hair to sandals.

“Lordy, lordy,” Jack O'Keefe breathed.

Immediately she crawled into the second limo's back seat.

“The resemblance is uncanny,” Asher said worriedly. “Which is Liz, and which is Sarah?” He replayed in his mind the way the second Liz had walked. “No, the second one's all wrong. She's stiff. Despite the makeup and huge sunglasses, you could see her face was pasty. There was something almost sickly about her. Sarah is the second ‘Liz,' and she's on Levine's chemicals.”

O'Keefe said quietly, “But the antidote pills should have blocked the drug's effect. She shouldn't look so rigid, so pale, so ill—”

“I know it was the antidote,” Dirk insisted.

“I'm probably wrong,” O'Keefe said. “She's probably acting it out to convince them.”

They had no time to discuss it further.

Ten men in tan summer suits, one of whom was Gordon, had instantly followed Sarah from the elevator and into the second limo. Another was Allan Levine with his doctor's bag. Three sat in front, and seven in back. Gordon took the wheel. It was a lot of manpower. So many people even for a stretch limo that two in the back would have to sit on the floor. Bremner was prepared.

He was also clever. The way the two limos were positioned—with the first idling ahead of the elevator, nose angled up the drive, and the second at the elevator door—Arlene Debo and the
real Liz Sansborough would have had to turn their heads at the precise moment to see Sarah slip into the limo behind them. Even then, they wouldn't have seen her clearly, and Bremner was probably distracting them with his Prince Charming act anyway. Still, Bremner had to be sweating blood right now.

One good look at the second Liz Sansborough by either Arlene Debo or the real Liz would blow his whole plan.

Apparently he'd gotten away with it, because the garage's mesh security gate retracted. The two limos rolled up the driveway ramp. They paused at the top while the two Languedoc men surveyed the street. One made a swift motion, and the limos sped onto the boulevard.

Asher let three cars feed in behind, then pulled the van into traffic after them. He resisted the desire to floor the accelerator and grab his Gunsite pistol. But the truth was, he would be willing to kill all of them, even Arlene Debo, if that's what it took to get back Sarah.

Then cold fear and a wave of nausea hit his stomach in a rush. “Jack?” He was in a kind of shock. “Maybe it was the wrong chemical. Maybe Levine used a different drug on her!”

Inside the van, everyone fell silent as they followed the government limousines through the evening streets. If the doctor had used a different drug, they all knew, Sarah's situation was desperate.

Chapter 62

“Is the tracking device working?” Asher asked tensely as he glanced at the two men hunched over a computer screen in back.

“We've got an excellent reading.”

In tandem the two high-security limousines crisscrossed Paris. They circled blocks, sped in and out of alleys, and made dramatic U-turns. Hughes Bremner's limo was always first. Bremner was an excellent driver, devious and daring.

Asher Flores could have written a book on the art of surveillance. He stayed back and was patient. Finally the two limousines swung west out of downtown Paris on the Avenue de la Reine. With the tracking device pointing the way, Asher followed. A few miles later they turned into a private, gated estate behind high, thick walls. With razor-sharp concertina wire topping the walls, the estate looked as forbidding and isolated as the Bastille.

Bremner's limo paused at the security check. His window lowered. The guard asked questions, listened to responses, made a call, and finally waved both vehicles through.

Asher drove around to the employees' entrance, where the van would attract less notice. The guard at the employees' gate studied the expensive vehicle with respect.

“You like my baby,
bon ami
?” Asher got out, closed the door.

He and the guard discussed the splendid vehicle. Then Asher scratched his head and pretended to remember he had
business. He explained he needed to show his card, and carefully he reached inside his jacket.

Instead he brought out the Beretta. Apologizing, he tied and gagged the guard, while Jack O'Keefe and George jumped out, cut the phone line, and locked the gate. Asher drove them on inside the high walls, following the signals of the tracking device planted on Sarah.

The estate was densely wooded, and after a half mile Asher stopped behind a stand of trees. He cut the engine as he peered at the two Languedoc limousines. They were parked on the entry drive, at an angle to a grand stone villa with Doric columns. In front of the villa a children's party was busily in progress.

Gordon and six of Bremner's men loosely ringed the two Languedoc limousines. Their sunglasses constantly surveyed the trees, the lush lawn, and the house itself. They were vigilant, conscious of being on the Carnivore's turf.

Liz Sansborough—animated, real—stood between Hughes Bremner and Arlene Debo outside the lead limo. The doctor and one of Bremner's tan-suited men stood outside the second.

Sarah was nowhere in sight.

The five with Bremner formed a ragged row, backs to the limos, watching the party. Ponies trotted laughing youngsters around a temporary ring. A tiny man in a pink frock coat led an elephant on whose back rode a pink satin box full of more laughing children. A carousel rang with lively calliope music. Clowns capered and juggled across the thick, rolling lawn.

If this was the coming-in, the Carnivore couldn't have picked a better spot. Outside observation and interference would be minimal. A contained environment. And what Langley shooter, no matter how hardened, would fire into a group of families with children?

Then Asher spotted the last of Bremner's men. He'd joined the party and was eating cookies. As if he were a guest.

Asher let the van roll backward and put it in park. He, O'Keefe, and O'Keefe's comrades returned to watch from among the horse chestnut trees.

Liz Sansborough was speaking into Hughes Bremner's ear.

Bremner nodded, and the beautiful former agent looked out across the verdant lawn and waved. Asher could see no one respond in any way.

Then a clown cartwheeled from the crowd and, juggling three colorful balls, approached the three men and two women. Dressed from head to toe in the costume of a plump French sailor from the days of Napoleon, the grease-painted clown tossed the balls to the men.

They were taken aback. The doctor caught his ball, but Bremner and his man slid their hands inside their jackets, reaching for their weapons.

The clown doubled over in exaggerated glee.

Liz Sansborough walked forward. The clown waved, and the two rapidly exchanged whispers.

Events speeded up. Bremner said something and opened the back door to the first limo. The clown got in. Immediately Arlene Debo got into the front seat. Bremner slammed the two doors shut.

“Jesus,” Jack O'Keefe whispered to Asher.

“Yeah. The clown's got to be the Carnivore!” Using a clown's makeup and clothing to hide a face—and an identity—was an old trick, but it sure as hell still worked.

The Carnivore was alive. He'd fooled everyone again.

Then, as Asher watched, Liz Sansborough, escorted by Gordon, walked toward the rear of the lead limousine in her tight black dress and heeled sandals. She was going around the limo to get in next to the Carnivore. She looked tired and relieved.

At that instant four ponies broke free and thundered across the lawn. Children squealed. Adults shouted. Bremner's man, who had been amiably enjoying the party, appeared to try to catch them. But it was clear to Asher that the agent had created this diversion—parents running helter-skelter after their children.

The panic drew everyone's attention from the limos.

Yes. The second limo's back door opened, and Sarah Walker emerged!

Asher's temples throbbed. Sarah!

Behind the lead limo, the real Liz Sansborough stopped in her tracks, astonished, as Sarah closed in.

Sarah hesitated.

The two beautiful women in sunglasses and identical black dresses stared at each other, face to face, no more than a foot apart. They were mirrored reflections of one another, although to anyone who studied them closely, one appeared slightly smaller, weaker, thinner than the other.

Sarah's mind was a haze of gray. Colorless, shapeless. She felt nothing, knew nothing, except the Man. He stood close by, observing, as she circled the limousine. That was what he had instructed her to do. Walk around the limousine. She would always do exactly as he directed. She desired only that.

And then she saw the woman's face.

Her mind seemed to split in a jagged, painful tear. Her hand rose from nowhere, reached out to touch the mole above the woman's mouth.
A beauty mark
, some distant voice in her brain announced. A beauty mark?

And then the voice inside her mind said,
“I'm Sarah Walker.”